With his Comedy Central contract up in the middle of next year, would Jon Stewart actually leave his "Daily Show" chair? He certainly won't be joining
the "Monday Night Football" booth, blasting away on MSNBC or replacing Ryan Seacrest on "American Idol," but having recently turned 50, might he be
tempted by a new challenge? ...Read the whole story

Taking out political and Olympic advertising, MagnaGlobal says core media advertising revenues will climb by 2.0% in 2012, to $149.8 billion. That would be a slowdown compared to 2011's core media growth of 4.5%. ...Read the whole story

Lexus will debut its first-ever Super Bowl commercial for Super Bowl XLVI. The automaker will use its buy to tout its 2013 GS car and talk about its raft of products to come this year. The 30-second ad, via San Francisco-based Attik, will run during the first half of the game. ...Read the whole story

Nielsen research indicates stations can use their Web sites to notably expand reach of their news content, helping drive cross-platform sales. The data, which looked at the ABC affiliates in Seattle and Portland, shows that by using one metric, each received at least a 3% bump in the 25-to-54 demo in the May 2011 sweeps period. ...Read the whole story

With the goal of transforming the way people watch, interact with, and perhaps most importantly, share the way they experience television, the founders of New York-based digital agency Circ.us are spinning off a new "social TV" platform, dubbed TV Dinner, that will enable viewers to experience their favorite shows as if they were "live events" that can be shared with friends or other random viewers. ...Read the whole story

Around The Net

In a historic move, Fox will debut "Touch," a drama starring Kiefer Sutherland, "simultaneously in in more than 100 countries with a global marketing effort from Unilever," advertising a deodorant ("Sure" in the U.S.) with several different names worldwide. The show's theme -- it "features Mr. Sutherland as the father of an emotionally challenged 11-year-old boy who can predict events around the world," with "characters speaking in their native languages for authenticity" -- is obviously a good fit for this kind of launch, writes Steinberg. ...Read the whole story

Revenue of the U.S. television ecosystem in 2012 will reach about $165 billion, estimates Needham & Co Analyst Laura Martin. The recently published research points to estimates from PricewaterhouseCoopers suggesting that contributions to subscription and license ...More

Hulu is glomming ad dollars and YouTube has traffic and now more original content. But according to a new research note from Needham's analyst Laura Martin, those are small potatoes compared to the ad money TV ...More

For some, there is a fine line between sampling and piracy. For others, the goal posts keep moving. Where does marketing end and stealing start? If you go to a disreputable website and get CBS' "Two ...More